Originally published in four volumes. Volumes 1 and 2 translated from French by Blake Ferris and Mattias Ripa, and Volumes 3 and 4 translated by Anjali Singh.The complete volume published by Pantheon, 2007, 341 pages. The four volumes in the original version published between 2000 and 2003. English versions: Vols. 1 and 2 published as …
Category: Non-Fiction
The Po—An Elegy for Italy’s Longest River: Tobias Jones
Published by Head of Zeus, 2022, 276 pages “You need to understand the Po to understand Italy”, wrote the poet Guido Ceronetti. So Tobias Jones sets out to explore the river, going against its current: he starts from where it flows into the Adriatic Sea, tracing it back to its source in the Alps. Compared …
Continue reading The Po—An Elegy for Italy’s Longest River: Tobias Jones
The Last Nomad—Coming of Age in the Somali Desert: Shugri Said Salh
Published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2021, 302 pages “I am the last nomad. … What I am really trying to say is, I am the last person in my direct line to have once lived like that, and now I feel like the sole keeper of my family’s stories.” Shugri Said Salh’s family …
Continue reading The Last Nomad—Coming of Age in the Somali Desert: Shugri Said Salh
Personal History: Katherine Graham
Published by Vintage Books, 1997, 643 pages As publisher of The Washington Post from 1963 to 1991, Katherine Graham oversaw some of the century’s major stories in the US, such as the Pentagon Papers and Watergate. This autobiography tells her story, the story of a woman initially unsure of herself, who was thrust into a …
Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal?: Jeanette Winterson
Published by Vintage / Jonathan Cape, 2011, 230 pages When she was 25, Jeanette Winterson wrote Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, a fictionalized account of growing up as an adopted child in a Pentecostal community and coming out as a lesbian. This book, written when she was 50, tells the same story, but this …
Continue reading Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal?: Jeanette Winterson
The Girl with Seven Names—Escape from North Korea: Lee Hyeon-seo (with David Jones)
Published by William Collins, 2015, 304 pages This is an extraordinary story about a young North Korean woman who managed to get out of the country. Lee Hyeon-seo was born in Hyesan, a North Korean town near the Chinese border. Her father was in the military, and the family was comfortably off, partly because her …
Continue reading The Girl with Seven Names—Escape from North Korea: Lee Hyeon-seo (with David Jones)
Telling Me My Stories—Fragments of a Himalayan Childhood: Kunzang Choden
Published by Bloomsbury, 2025, 273 pages “As I walk through each room, I immediately become immersed in reminiscences of my parents, my brothers, relatives, visitors and attendants, their lives and mine, their stories and the stories of those who lived here before us. Lives from the past can be invoked in each room and through …
Continue reading Telling Me My Stories—Fragments of a Himalayan Childhood: Kunzang Choden
Rediscovering Travel—A Guide for the Globally Curious: Seth Kugel
Published by Liveright, 2018, 320 pages In this book, Seth Kugel takes us back to the thrill of discovery when we travel, which we seem to have lost in this time of information overload. Kugel retreats from our hurried, switched-on way of functioning, where we consult online resources for the perfect restaurant before we go …
Continue reading Rediscovering Travel—A Guide for the Globally Curious: Seth Kugel
Narrow Dog to Carcassonne: Terry Darlington
Published by Bantam Press / Random House, 2005, 352 pages “We could bore ourselves to death, drink ourselves to death, or have a bit of an adventure.” A retired couple, Terry and Monica Darlington take their whippet, Jim, and their narrowboat, meant for canals, across the Channel into France. This is a travel book whose …
Continue reading Narrow Dog to Carcassonne: Terry Darlington
In the Hide—How the Natural World Saved My Life: Gordon Buchanan
Written with Will MillardPublished by Witness Books, 2025, 312 pages “When I was young, if you had granted me one wish, I probably would have chosen to be invisible. If I was invisible, I rationalized, then I could get as close as possible to the earth’s most elusive creatures. Moreover, I could comfortably evade all …
Continue reading In the Hide—How the Natural World Saved My Life: Gordon Buchanan
Talking About Books 